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whedoncon

Well things happen and don’t happen in this town. Such is the way of the working writer.

Life, if we stop to relax and think about it, is a pretty good thing. Sure there are ups and there are downs but overall this little blue marble aint a bad place to hang out, all things considered.

My recently optioned screenplay seems to be going nowhere relatively quickly. The second option is coming up and I’ll have to decide on what to do with that. I’m really proud of this one and don’t want it to languish. I also really like the producers who are attached and don’t want to walk away from them, if they feel they just need a little more time to set some meetings. It’s a conundrum every writer faces at some point. Do I trust myself, or these people who have shown interest yet are unable to move it along?

Usually my answer to this is trust the other people. I tend to make bad, irrational choices for many different reasons, but am learning to control those self-destructive impulses the older I get.

My pulp novel continues to grow in popularity which I am incredibly grateful for. It will never be considered a classic of literature, nor should it. It’s a pulpy, hyper-violent and semi sexually explicit bit of fun. But, people are having fun reading it and the feedback warms the small, dark, thing that rests where my heart would be. If I had a heart, but I don’t, that thing is fucking useless.

And you do need to be heartless when it comes to writing. I’m not saying you should wake up every morning, have a hearty breakfast, a nice strong cup of coffee and then go find the nearest puppy to kick. You shouldn’t do that, that’s not cool.

The kicking the puppy part, not the hearty breakfast part, you should definitely eat breakfast.

I had the really awesome opportunity to speak at Whedoncon this past weekend and I have to say for my first time speaking at a sci-fi con, I had a great time.

One of the things I did was give a short seminar on writing and creating strong mythology within your work; which is incredibly important. I also talked about being heartless and how important that is.

By heartless, what I really mean is that you cannot grow so attached to your characters that you refuse to do things for the greater good of the story simply out of “love” for this fictional person or persons you’ve created.

I’ve received emails and DMs from readers who seem incredibly shocked about the death(s) of certain individuals within The Geek (that pulp novel I was talking about…out now!) and how these deaths broke their heart and they didn’t understand how I could kill them off.

My response is always the same. “Do you feel it worked for the story? Do you think their deaths were necessary?”

And luckily, for the most part, their answers are the same. “Yes.” They didn’t like it, they thought perhaps a narrow escape would have been better for these characters, but all admitted in the end, that the overall story would have lost quite a bit of its realism and intensity if these two characters had survived.

Now I will say that while I didn’t mind killing off one of these characters, because I wasn’t all that attached to them. This other character’s death in the book was troubling. I loved him (or her, no spoilers). I really did. I wrote a few chapters where this character survived or got the upper hand in a few different ways but it just didn’t work.

Within the mythology of The Geek, if this one specific character had survived, it would have changed everything. Gary (the main character) would not have been as affected as he was. The world would not have felt as real and/or desperate as it does.

If I had betrayed the mythology I created, because I listened to my heart, it would have been a disservice to the ultimately, poor, dead, son (or daughter) of a gun whose death, while evidently tragic was incredibly important.

Heartless. One must always be heartless. Break the rules of the world you create and you break the story.

Speaking of which, next week I’ll be starting a series of micro-stories, which I haven’t done in a while and people have been asking for. Hopefully you’ll enjoy them.

In the meantime, why not go grab a copy of The Geek. It’s available on Amazon.com in paperback and ebook. It’s also available now in paperback in both the UK and Canada on amazon as well.

Of course it’s available as an ebook from every place you can get an ebook, be it itunes, B&N and Kobol to name a few.

Wanna ask me a question? Wanna nerd out together with all us cool book nerds. Well then come on over to goodreads and hang out. http://bit.ly/1XpMF4k

Would you like to hear me whine, complain and bitch? Well then the Stuff n Stuff podcast is exactly what you’re looking for. Once a week, for about thirty minutes I sit down with my bro-host and we pick a topic to discuss. We then stay on topic for about 30 seconds before the whole thing derails, it’s quite fun. http://bit.ly/1KOLDsH

I’ve launched my incredibly mediocre Youtube channel and continue to work on programming and content for it. I hate to say it, but I really am having fun so come on by I’m doing a myriad of things, none of which make any sense.

Here’s a link to click http://bit.ly/1Sf9MXN and then why not subscribe and like my videos, don’t cost nothin’

Follow me on twitter, I always follow back unless you’re a porn bot or trying to sell me followers. http://bit.ly/1YIWqZA